Friday, October 18, 2013

Having been
inspired by Ros Barber’s recent The Marlowe
Papers, I have been digging a little into the Shakespeare authorship
question. For the most part, I find the arguments for Marlowe compelling – but
I also have some sympathy with those orthodox Stratfordian scholars who take
exception to the wild flights of fancy that have too often accompanied what
would otherwise be strong arguments. Speculations like these do massive damage
to the overall case, calling into question more firmly grounded arguments by
association.1

I’d like to give
one example from my recent reading.In A.D.
Wraight’s fascinating and thought-provoking book on Marlowe, The Story that the Sonnets Tell, there
is a curious little chapter dedicated to the publication of Marlowe’s
translation of Lucan in 1600 by Thomas Thorpe, later publisher of Shakespeare’s
Sonnets. Wraight is particularly interested in the dedication of this book to
Edward Blount, sometime publisher of Marlowe and associate of Thomas Walsingham.
She is convinced that this dedication is a cryptic message to Blount that “he
has seen Marlowe alive and in person, and has received a manuscript of a ‘booke’
that he is going to bring to Blount”.2

The dedication to
Blount is given “in the memory of that pure elemental wit, Chr. Marlow; whose
ghoast or Genius is to be seen walke the Churchyard in (at the least) three or
four sheets” – a reference that Wraight takes to indicate that Marlowe himself
has been seen, perhaps wrapped in the “sheets” (robes) of a Moor to guard
against being recognised. In a characteristic building of one supposition on
another, Wraight suggests that Marlowe “was probably a very good actor” and
“may well have been careful to adopt a disguise that would completely conceal
him”.3 Yet there is a simpler
explanation for the remark: the “sheets” are the publications – the pages – in
which his “genius” appears. If there is a hint of a cryptic message, it is
likely to be in that parenthetical “at the least” which might hint that Thorpe
was aware that more “sheets” in St Paul’s were haunted by Marlowe’s genius than
was always (openly) acknowledged.

Wraight notes this
“innocent reading” but dismisses it,4 mainly because she is so
intrigued by the next part of the dedication, that appears tantalisingly
conspiratorial. Thorpe instructs his friend to “be sure to have chang’d your
lodgings” when he comes with his “booke”, and to make little marking of “your
friends when you have found some way for them to come in at”. At the beginning
of this little section Thorpe seems even more clear about what he is proposing:
“you are to accommodate your selfe with some fewe instructions, concerning the
property of a Patron, which you are not yet possest of”.

For Wraight there
is only one possible meaning of property here, that is, an object of ownership.
What this object is, is made clear for her by Thorpe’s next statement,
referring to “when I bring you the booke”. “Evidently Thorpe has been entrusted
with a manuscript which he is to give to Blount”,5 and equally evidently, she
argues, it cannot be the Book of Lucan since that “contains the letter from Thorpe that refers to the ‘booke’ he is
promising to bring to Blount – which cannot mean itself”.6

However, a recent
LRB review by John Kerrigan has made clear that in Shakespeare’s time there was
another meaning of the word property which was considerably more dominant.7 In modern usage, property
most often denotes objects which are owned, but it can also be understood as an
innate characteristic of a thing, its properties.
Thus, the property of ice is to be cold, of metal is to be pliable. For the
Elizabethans, this meaning was also commonplace with respect to
persons/statuses. Where Shakespeare uses the term he “usually employs the word
to designate the quality of something”.8 In Elizabethan English, then,
the “property” of a “Patron” would almost certainly have meant the
characteristic qualities of such a man.

Taking this as the
meaning of the word makes the rest of Thorpe’s dedication completely clear as a
satirical set of instructions for how to
behaveas a Patron. Blount, he
instructs, must “study them for your better grace as our Gallants do fashions”
(in order to put on a brave show as a proper “Patron”). The instructions
include: “you must be proud and think you have merit enough in you, though your
are ne’er so emptie”; then, when Thorpe appears to “bring … the book” (i.e., to
present the book he has dedicated to this grand Patron, which is indeed, contra
Wraight, the translation of Lucan), Blount should “take physic, and keep state,
assign me a time by your man to come againe, and afore the day, be sure to have
chang’d your lodging”. In the meantime, he should “sweat with the invention of
some pitiful dry jest or two which you may happen to utter” but show “litle (or
not at al) marking of your friends when you have found some way for them to
come in at”, and “if by some chance something has dropt from you worth the
taking up weary all that come to you with the often repetition of it”. Far from
being instructions to (secretly) let hidden friends in at the back door of his
(skilfully changed) lodgings, this is a satire on the way great men (those
likely to be addressed for patronage) make their clients wait on them;
over-rate and over-repeat their own wit; and do not mark (acknowledge) the wit
of their friends, if they even give them a chance to say anything at all! Read
in this way, the dedication is a hilarious in-joke between two publishers about
the manners of great men.

If it needed any
further proof that this reading fits, the end of the dedication says it all: while
Thorpe doubts not that, were Blount to “mould himself to [these things]” it
would not suit him, he goes on to say: “One special virtue in our Patrons of
these daies I have promist myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give
nothing”, i.e., Thorpe, unlike usual dedicators, requires no money of his
Patron, “yet, thy love I will challenge as my peculiar Object both in this, and
(I hope) many more succeeding offices”.

This small
correction of a small part of the much larger argument Wraight makes should not
be taken as a wholesale criticism of the book – I think there is a great deal
of merit in her main argument. But perhaps it could serve as an illustration of
the temptation to build labyrinthine twists and turns of conspiracy on very
flimsy suppositions, and the dangers of so doing. It is possible to read secret
messages into almost anything. Had Wraight stepped back for a second, she might
have wondered why the news that Thorpe had spotted Marlowe, or instructions to
meet secretly and deliver an important manuscript, would ever have been
inserted into a printed dedication (necessitating cryptic and heavily disguised
hints) when presumably Thorpe simply had to cross the churchyard and go and
knock on Blount’s door.

Cecilia Busby has
a PhD from the London School of Economics and taught Social Anthropology for a number of years at the
universities of Edinburgh, Goldsmiths and Kent. She has published The Performance of Gender(2000,
Athlone) and a number of academic papers. More recently she has turned to
writing fiction for children and, as C. J. Busby, is the author of the Frogspellseries.

1As one of the reviewers of this piece has pointed out, orthodox
Stratfordians are not guiltless of this tendency to ‘flights of fancy’
either.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Director Jim Jarmusch, in an interview at Cannes this summer publicizing his latest film Only Lovers Left Alive, opines that Christopher Marlowe may have written the Shakespeare plays. Click here for video clip (Marlowe conversation begins at 3:43, with interesting commentary by actor John Hurt, as well, who plays Marlowe in the film).

The blog is closed

Ted Hughes, British Poet Laureate (1984-1998)

"The way to really develop as a writer is to make yourself a political outcast, so that you have to live in secret. This is how Marlowe developed into Shakespeare."

Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid, Faber 2007, p.120

Welcome to MSC: the Web's #1 Blog on Christopher Marlowe

We kicked off in May 2008. We're a blog dedicated to the brilliant Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Yes, we believe he could have authored many of the Shakespeare works, and so we offer up hearty servings of delicious intrigue. Thanks for visiting!

THE MARLOWE-AS-SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY LAID OUT FOR YOU!

Poets' Corner, London's Westminster Abbey

See the question mark?

THE POWER OF US: KIT Marlowe Up, Earl of Oxford Down

"Meanwhile, the authorship debate shows no signs of fading away. Francis Bacon's star has waned, eclipsed long ago by the Earl of Oxford's. Now Christopher Marlowe's star is on the rise. 'It looks like there's a shelf life to every candidate' of about 75 or 80 years, Shapiro says. 'There's a lot more energy and enthusiasm behind Marlowe.'"

Christopher Marlowe - prodigy, successful playwright/poet, and pretty darn good spy for Queen Elizabeth - lands himself in the kind of hot water that may send him to the gallows. His powerful handlers in espionage, concerned about saving their talented agent, decide to fake his death and send him away. Marlowe, in hiding, continues to write plays and poems. William Shakespeare agrees to be the frontman for these works.

"perfect"

From Amazon: "Rodney Bolt’s book is not an attempt to prove that, rather than dying at 29 in a tavern brawl, Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to Europe, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. Instead, it takes that as the starting point for a playful and brilliantly written 'fake biography' of Marlowe, which turns out to be a life of the Bard as well." The Spectator praises: "A triumph...perfect." Click the pic to purchase! And click here for our interview with Rodney Bolt!

Buy This!

Wonder who wrote Shakespeare? Mike Rubbo's Much Ado About Something makes a compelling case that it was Marlowe. As seen on PBS Frontline and now on DVD. Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times praises: " . . . an inviting piece of film . . . Much Ado About Something is a film of ideas - well, notions, anyway - that are bound to stimulate discussion, an aspect long missing from documentary." Click the pic to purchase! (or rent it today on Netflix!) Click here for our print interview with Mike Rubbo, click here for our video interview. Click here for an 8-minute preview of the film. Click here for a Tampa Tribune feature about Mike Rubbo.

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